English (Liverpool)

Source: Watson, Kevin. 2007. Liverpool English. Journal of the International Phonetic Association 37(3). 351–360.

Comments: Dental fricatives /θ, ð/ are often realised as dental stops [t̪, d̪] both word-initially, medially and finally, although dental fricatives are also found... Post-vocalic /r/ is absent in LE, so that words like car, farm, park are r-less. In prevocalicand intervocalic positions, /r/ is typically realised as [ɹ] or [ɾ]... LE is similar to other accents in the north of England in that the /g/ in clusters is maintained... For /t/, affrication is common word-initially, whilst spirantisation is common in intervocalic and word-final positions... As well as realising /t/ as an oral fricative, it can also be debuccalised to [h]... It is also common for speakers to realise /k/ as an affricate or a fricative, too, as the speaker’s various tokens of cloak testify... Fricativisation of /p/ also occurs, typically to [ɸ], but this is much less frequent than that of /t/ or /k/... Phonetic fricatives are also found for the voiced plosives /b, d, g/, although of these the lenition of /d/ is by far the most common. Because final-devoicing is common in LE, as it is in other varieties of English, the fricative realisations of /b, d, g/ are rarely voiced in final position (Watson 2007).

Contributed by: Anton Kukhto (kukhto@mit.edu)